Running Away From The Sky
by Cerebral Seductress
Summary: She was running away from life itself, and he was along for the ride. YuffieVincent.
1. she lit up the sky

**TITLE:** Running Away From The Sky

**AUTHOR:** Cerebral Seductress (Fallon D)

**DESCRIPTION:** She was running away from life itself, and he was along for the ride.

**RATING:** Um, PG? Just to be safe.

**THEME:** "Warrior," Katie Griffin.

**A/N:** I'm trying to refrain from inserting meaningless romance into my other fic, Darkest Shades, and therefore felt the need to write a shamelessly sappy vignette. I think I'll keep adding to this as the mood strikes me.

……………………..

**CHAPTER 1**

He was never quite sure how or when they had begun traveling together. It seemed that in one moment, he was alone in Gongaga with his thoughts, and in the next she was there, her countenance a good deal more somber than it had been a year ago, her attitude lacking its usual careless disdain.

"You missed me," she stated with a small, quirky smile. A less observant man may not have noticed the hesitation in her voice, the doubt that flashed in her eyes and belied her bold words.

At night she would sit and gaze into the firelight, pensive and moody. Unreachable. Once she looked up at him and found him studying her. "What's wrong, old man?" she asked, her voice tinged bitterly. "Worried that I might usurp your throne as King of the Brooding Stare?" Despite her brave tone, she shivered, the fire doing nothing to ward off the winter chill.

Hardly acknowledging that she was angry or pondering why he wanted so badly to see her smile again, he stood and moved around the flames, settling at last beside her so that his cloak would cover them both. She leaned into him and he let his arm drape across her shoulders, not at all surprised to find that they were shaking with silent sobs.

They continued like this for weeks, months- it must have been years, though he didn't keep tally. She certainly changed, but he remained much the same, and as the years shrank between them he found himself wondering- about her family, her friends. He knew that she maintained contact with neither. Of anyone from AVALANCHE, he above all must have seemed the most unlikely candidate to become her companion, and yet here she was, far beyond her teenage years and showing no signs of parting from his company.

They were in a forgotten corner of the Mythril Mine on the eastern continent, having taken shelter from the raging storm outside, when she first spoke to him of her reason for seclusion. They were both leaning against the cold stone wall, legs stretched out in front of them, hips touching, shoulders brushing. Their clothes were laid out to dry beside the fire, and their skin brushed each time he moved, but they were far past modesty now, and his cloak covered as much of them as needed.

"I'm sorry," she said suddenly.

He glanced at her, noting the way the firelight danced across the planes of her face. "Whatever for?"

"For not understanding." Her eyes met his, her chin rising slightly. "Before. Not just about, you know, the coffin and all, but…about…about Lucrecia." The last bit she said in a rush, and then she switched her gaze back to the fire, lips pursed as if expecting him to rebuff her apology.

Truthfully, he had all but forgotten her offhanded comments when they had traveled with AVALANCHE. He wasn't the type to hold grudges against anyone but himself, and she had been little more than a child then, unable to comprehend a lost love, a stolen lifetime, the curse of eternity.

"Thank you." There was nothing else to say.

She nodded, poked her toes out from underneath his cape, pushing her bare feet closer to the fire.

"I tried to change," she said at length. "I tried to be a lady. He…wanted a lady."

He said nothing. After a pause she wound her right arm around his claw, intertwining her delicate fingers with his tarnished gold ones.

"I'll never change for anyone again," she murmured, turning her face into his shoulder. Her breath felt warm on his skin, his body cold from nearly four decades of loneliness.

That night was a rare occurrence, because she never spoke to him again of what had driven her away from her her future as Lady of Wutai.

She was different since they'd met, and the changes were not just in her demeanor. Her hair was longer- but not much- brushing her shoulders in blue-black waves every time she turned her head. Her lips were fuller, her features lean and secretive. She was more woman than child. He had hardly taken the pains to notice until he glanced up one day to see her standing on a boulder overlooking the Cosmo plains. One hand was drawn up to shield her stormy eyes from the setting sun, the other braced against her hip. Her stance was casual, the outline of her form against the pink/orange sky anything but innocent.

When she hopped down and looked up at him with a smile on her face that didn't quite reach her eyes, he returned the stare unflinchingly, wondering why he hadn't noticed before. When she closed the distance between them, her gaze holding his, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to let her pull him down to her.

Mouth on mouth, breaths mingling, her hands fisting in his shirt as she pulled him closer and collapsed against him in the same instant. It was as though they'd kissed a thousand times before, and he couldn't remember a time when he'd felt so right about his actions instead of shrouding himself in guilt.

When she finally broke away, she was tottering on a rock in front of him, balancing out their considerable height difference the only way she could. She tossed her head, flipping an errant lock of hair out of her eyes.

"It's getting dark," was all she said. She brushed her lips against his once more before stepping back onto solid ground and hauling her pack over her shoulders.

He was never quite sure how or when they began traveling together, but he knew, down to the instant, when it was that he fell in love with her.


	2. blue skies breaking

**A/N: **I've made a decision regarding this story. I was going to make it into a full-length fiction, but after discovering that it has been archived in the C2 community "1," I realized I didn't really want to write another novel-length story. So as of now, "Running Away From The Sky" will be a series of one-shots, each of them written as a stand-alone with no intention of continuing. All of them, however, will be Yuffentine. Woohoo.

**Running Away From The Sky: Blue Skies Breaking**

**THEME:** "The Distance," Bon Jovi

Yuffie had never lied to her father. Not once, in all her eighteen years, not even a white lie, not even when she really, _really_ wanted to. She prided herself on her honesty, among other things, and would never think of disrespecting her mother's memory by fibbing even a little bit to her dad.

She stared at the blacktop that stretched on for miles in front of her, seeing only the guiding lines to keep her from veering off into the trees lining the highway. Two weeks on the road, sometimes driving for sixteen hours at a time before she finally gave in and stopped at a roadside motel, tracing and retracing her own tracks because she didn't know where to go or how to escape the image that was burned into her mind like an ugly scar.

Walking in from work, dropping her knapsack on the table beside the door. "Dad, I'm home!" No answer, but she didn't expect one, and ambling into the kitchen to look for something to eat, she stopped dead in her tracks, stunned into stillness.

_Dear Dad,_

Her dad-

_I'm leaving for the summer. I need to figure some stuff out, and I know you guys could probably use some alone time._

kissing-

_I'll call to let you know I'm okay._

her mother's sister.

_Be back in August. Congratulations!_

_Love,_

_Yuffie_

Chekhov had turned to face her, holding her hand up, a glittering diamond on her ring finger. "Yuffie," she'd exclaimed, jubilant and beautiful, _you TRAITOR how could you do this to me and Mom when I didn't even KNOW-_

Yuffie pounded the steering wheel angrily now, still unable to put any kind of wording to her rampant emotions. Her mother had been dead for almost two years- granted, they had divorced when Yuffie was small, much too small to remember what it had been like to have two parents living in the same household. But somehow the sight of Godo and Chekhov had seemed so incredibly disrespectful. She'd known they were close. Even after Yuffie's parents had divorced, Godo had maintained his friendship with his ex-wife's sister.

Now that Yuffie considered it, she realized how stupid she'd been. Why hadn't she seen the signs? The sideways glances, the 'platonic' dates on New Year's Eve, the way that they always seemed to be gone on business trips at exactly the same time? She had years of clues and obvious hints to sift through, and looking at all the evidence right in front of her, Yuffie knew that the idea of Chekhov and her dad being involved hadn't occurred to her because it had seemed so incredibly outlandish. It was unthinkable.

...Though apparently not to _them_. Hmmph.

When she'd turned eighteen, Yuffie had inherited a portion of her trust fund. The majority of the money would be released to her on her twenty-first birthday, but what she had now was more than enough to fund her summer road trip. More importantly, it was enough to get her away from her dad so she could make some sense of the tangled jumble of thoughts in her head- and the swirl of betrayed emotions in her heart.

Blah. The only problem was that she didn't particularly care to think about anything right now, much less dear old Dad kissing her aunt.

Oh well. It was only June. She was only in Colorado. Which meant two months and forty-six more states in which she could clear her head (she figured that Alaska and Hawaii were eliminated from her agenda purely because she got motion sickness like crazy and didn't want to bother with planes or boats), and she had several thousand dollars to blow. She was reasonably sure that her father wouldn't try to track her down, but if she didn't call soon then she wouldn't blame him for worrying.

Her keen eyes picked out a movement further up the road, and Yuffie frowned. She hadn't seen a single animal in her hours of driving this highway, despite the million and five signs warning her to beware of moose- but then, she could tell already that this wasn't a moose.

No antlers, for one thing.

Instead, it was a man, with midnight hair that spilled down his back like a velvet waterfall. As Yuffie drew closer, her eyes picked out the fine details of his appearance: black jeans over faded brown boots, beat-up leather jacket, the red bandanna he'd tied around his head to keep the sweat from his eyes. She was close enough to see the straight, unsmiling line of his mouth as he turned and stuck out his thumb.

She never picked up hitchhikers.

_Don't even go there-_

She never lied to her father, either.

_Forget it, Yuffie, _she told herself as his features sharpened in her line of vision. Oh, heck. Even at this distance she could see his eyes, mahogany and burning and bright enough to land a 747 on a rainy night. _Nope. Don't pick up hitchhikers._

She drove straight past him, unable to avoid staring at him like a lovesick puppy as she steered her car to the opposite side of the road. His eyes followed her, clear-cut features impassive. He'd expected her to drive by. He'd known she wouldn't stop; she could tell from his dejected expression. Yuffie kept driving.

Twenty yards down the road, she edged her foot onto the brake and slowly coasted to a halt.

She was predictable. Boring, even. Straight A's in high school, captain of the volleyball team, a real, honest-to-God second-degree black belt in aikido. She even had scholarships to her three top picks for colleges. She was going to be a marine biologist because her mother had been one. She was going to get married to a successful businessman because her father wanted her to. She would have children because he wanted to die a grandfather. She was congratulating her dad on his engagement even though she hated the fact that he hadn't even told her he was seeing anyone, much less her aunt.

Two years of trying to make it work with her dad, two years of healing from losing her mother so unexpectedly, two years of him _lying_ to her. You just didn't _do_ things like getting married to your ex-wife's sister without telling anyone. Without telling your daughter.

Yuffie chewed on her bottom lip, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel and watching the stranger in her sideview mirror. She was going to pick up this guy anyway. Predictability be damned.

She put the Cherokee into reverse and backed the short distance it took to reach the hitchhiker. The window was already half rolled-down, saving her from having to splay herself across the front seat to use the manual controls.

"Need a ride?" she asked, leaning over and down so he could see her face. Belatedly she realized the stupidity of the question, and the possible sarcastic answers he could give her. _No, lady, I'm just trying to catch free-falling Fruit Loops with my thumb._

But he only nodded once, wordlessly. Yuffie's interest was piqued at the quiet fire in his eyes.

"Where you goin'?" she pressed.

The stranger shrugged. "Anywhere."

"Perfect, me too. Get in." She reached over to unlock the door, and he unshouldered his bag before ducking inside.

"Don't forget your seatbelt. Oh- um, you can throw your stuff in the back if you want," she said, looking at the duffel bag. The letter V was monogrammed on the side and was nearly threadbare, stained and faded from years of exposure. "I'm Yuffie, by the way. Yuffie Kisaragi, but I don't expect you to remember my last name. No one ever does." She dared a brief glance in his direction. Although his features were nearly obscured by raggedly cut locks of black hair, the perfection of his face marred by the perpetual frown he wore, he was every bit as striking as she first thought. And a bit familiar-looking too, although she had no idea when she might have seen any hitchhikers, especially raven-haired, gorgeous ones with eyes like a ruby in sunlight.

Keeping her eyes on the road, she struggled to find something to say as the wind from her open window whipped her hair. The absurdity of her eagerness was not lost on her; Yuffie Kisaragi was not clueless and never had been. Starting a conversation with a random hitchhiker may have been completely ridiculous, but she was tired of conforming to standards, exhausted of wondering what other people would think.

And lonely, as much as she didn't want to admit it.

"So, nameless man, what's the V stand for?" she asked, nodding her head towards his bag.

His gloved hands tightened visibly on the canvas straps, the well-defined muscles in his forearms flexing. "Valentine," he said.

"Valentine?" She stared unseeing at the blacktop that stretched in front of her, a thousand thoughts racing through her head in less than a second. Valentine- passion- heat- red eyes- _stop it, Yuffie_- "That's your name?"

He glanced at her, then at the bag, and finally directed his crimson gaze out at the road.

She realized belatedly that the bag probably wasn't even his. A man that begged rides off of eightteen-year old girls and carried all his belongings on his back probably couldn't afford a custom monogrammed duffel bag.

He probably, she thought with a wry smile, wasted all his money on that accursed leather jacket. Damn leather and the appealing way it clung to his shoulders, anyway.

They traveled in silence for a few moments longer, and then Yuffie couldn't stand it anymore. "Music?" she asked almost apologetically. _Gee, random hitchhiker dude, I'm so terribly sorry for not being able to tolerate your severe lack of conversational skills. Mind if I listen to Audioslave for a bit?_

He didn't answer.

"So what are you doing in Colorado?" she asked, turning the volume low as Chris Cornell began to bellow mournfully.

He sighed. "Nothing much."

"Me neither, I'm just kind of passing through. Denver's my next stop. Where are you from?"

"East."

Pause.

"I'm from Texas," she said affably, choosing to ignore his vague, monosyllabic answers. "I graduated high school last month and decided to take a road trip. I don't even know where I'm going- it's stupid, I know. But I couldn't stand to sit in Austin and stare at my dad's high school football trophies all summer, so I'm headed to Nevada. Or California. I haven't really decided yet."

Another pause.

"You don't sound like a Texan," he said finally.

"Huh?" She was surprised that he even spoke, much less initiated something like a conversation. "Oh, you mean my accent. I grew up in Seattle with my mom, and only went to live with my dad after she died..." Yuffie trailed off, hesitant to continue if he thought she was looking for sympathy, but eventually shook it off and said, "I'm really not so crazy about Texan accents anyway. You can never understand a darn thing they're saying. 'Wire' becomes 'wahr;' 'that' is 'thay-at,' and I'm like totally lost most of the time. My dad's friends...oh my gawd, you'll die laughing at this story. When I first went to live with my dad, he had this big barbeque at his house, sort of a welcome home gig, you know?

"So afterwards, me and him and a couple of his friends are sitting around and blabbing or whatever, and somehow we got on the subject of boils. I don't even remember how. My dad's friend Gorki starts talking about how he used to get boils when he was a kid. You know what boils are? Those big, huge, like totally nasty sores?"

She saw a shadow of a smirk flitter across his lips, and felt a grin creeping onto her own face.

Encouraged, she went on, "Well, apparently Gorki used to get boils really bad all over his back and shoulders- I know, _serious_ grossness- and he couldn't figure out how to get rid of them. Finally, some old man tells him to eat roadrunner meat. Swear to God, that's exactly what he said, as in Wile E Coyote and that ugly bird he was always chasing. So Gorki, he figures he doesn't have much to lose anyway, he goes out and kills a roadrunner, cooks the meat, and eats it. Lo and behold, his boils disappear."

"No kidding."

"Yup. And I'm just sitting there, listening to Gorki, and everybody around me is nodding and talking about how there must be some kind of toxin in the roadrunner meat to get rid of boils. And I was totally confused. Finally I spoke up, and I was like, 'So roadrunner meat gets rid of balls?'"

The hitchhiker glanced at her incredulously, and Yuffie nodded. "Yeah, I spent the whole conversation thinking he was talking about balls instead of boils. I was a little shocked, but I didn't know if Texans were just more open-minded or what. I was thinking Gorki was saying, 'Yeah, these balls kept coming back and I didn't know how to get rid of them,' and 'After I ate roadrunner meat, my balls just disappeared.' I felt like a moron."

He snorted, raised his gloved knuckles to his mouth to keep- at least, she assumed as much- from laughing.

Yuffie smiled wryly. "It's okay. I know it was stupid of me. I'd just never heard a Texas accent before. My dad's isn't all that pronounced."

"Balls," he said. His voice was choked from restraint.

"Yes. Balls. Go on, laugh. You know you want to."

Valentine- or, uh, whatever his name was- chuckled. "What did Gorki say?"

"There was a really long silence, and then my dad said, 'honey, he means BOILS.' I turned beet-red and managed to squeak out some excuse about bedtime. I could hear them laughing from my bedroom, which is all the way on the other side of the house."

He laughed, genuinely this time. His voice was rich and low, a deep baritone interlaced with tendrils of silvery gruffness. Gawd, he was hot. For an older guy, anyway. Yuffie's insides melted.

"So let's try this again," she said, and making sure to keep her eyes on the road (probably not a good idea to crash the jeep while she was trying to get into his good graces), she stuck out her hand. "I'm Yuffie. And you are...?"

"Vincent." He took her hand in his briefly, the warmth of his grasp surprising her as their fingers touched, his gloved, hers bare.

"Nice to meet you, Vincent." She put her hand back on the steering wheel and smiled. "We've got about an hour and a half till Denver."

"Great." He cast her a sidelong glance, and she couldn't help but feel that he was sizing her up. "You ever pick up a hitchhiker before?"

"Nope." Yuffie pursed her lips, realizing for the first time that this guy probably weighed twice as much as she and probably knew how to handle himself. "But you seemed harmless enough, and we're a long way from civilization so I figured you could use a ride." _And I took my sensei down in Round Tournament two months ago,_ she thought but did not say, _so don't even think about it._

"Yeah...thanks for the ride."

"No problem. To tell you the truth, I'm getting a little cabin fevery right now anyway. I need the company. You know what it's like to drive for two weeks without exchanging a word with anyone? I don't think the clerks at the motel front desks really count. Do they? I'm not sure. But it feels like _years_ since the last time I actually talked to somebody. Or _at_ somebody." She laughed nervously. "Feel free to tell me to shut up anytime."

He shrugged, the worn leather of his jacket creaking in response. Yuffie wondered briefly what good a leather jacket did anybody in this heat, but she didn't think he'd appreciate her asking.

She leaned forward and turned up the music. Maybe she was still running away from everything, but at least now she wasn't alone.


	3. the sky might catch on fire

**A/N:** I wrote this in just under an hour, on a flight from Tucson to LA. I kept elbowing my seatmate with my haste in writing, but I didn't have my laptop and I didn't want to let the idea slip away. He was pretty nice about it, though. So I dedicate this to him. I'll probably never see him again, but this vignette would never have come into being if he hadn't been so tolerant of my being left-handed.

**Running Away From the Sky: The Sky Might Catch on Fire**

**THEME: "Tonight and the Rest of My Life," Nina Gordon**

Hojo spent most of his life searching for something to give his life meaning. He experimented and tortured, altered and spliced, mostly for reasons that he kept to himself. Shinra financed his scientific insanity, to a point, until even they realized that his intentions were not so noble as he claimed. The Jenova project was a failed experiment, as were the hundreds of Mako-enhanced clones whose growth he had so carefully monitored over the years.

Some say he was looking to create the perfect soldier. I believe Hojo was looking for something else entirely. A man like him, so disinclined towards affection and outward emotion, could only admire Lucrecia, hate himself even more for his inability to care about her. His experiments were hopeless attempts to discover the motivation for human emotions.

In the end, he found what he was looking for in a failed candidate.

Cloud Strife was not the flawless warrior science had anticipated. He was not even an acceptable SOLDIER, his body weakened by injections, his mind racked with confusion and false memories. But the SOLDIER who was dismissed into oblivion rose above his predicted failure to defeat not only Rufus Shinra, not only Hojo and his genetically altered monsters, but the invincible Sephiroth himself. A flawed, hopeless and war-ravaged man conquered the godlike entity the entire Planet had feared.

This, more than anything, proves that no one can predict the power of the human heart. No one can estimate the twists and turns it will take to ensure its own survival. No one can control the strength of its emotion.

After AVALANCHE defeated Sephiroth and Holy and the Lifestream ground Meteor into oblivion, after the dust settled and the realization slowly sank in that it was finally _over,_ we each returned to whatever semblance of life we had trudged through before Meteor. Cloud took up his work as a mercenary once more, Cid went to Rocket Town to make the necessary repairs to his precious airship. Yuffie has returned to her scavenging and thievery, with one notable difference: she is not alone.

I am with her.

Despite her constant cheer and perpetual sarcasm, it is quite obvious that something is wrong, something that not even magic can cure. When I finally dare to ask her about it, she laughs, helpless giggles interspersed with lung-deep hacking that cuts through my hearing like a thousand metaphorical knives, and says, "It's not fair, is it, Vincent? You'll live forever. I won't even see my eighteenth birthday."

She reaches up and wipes the blood from the corner of her mouth, and the resignation I see in her eyes is enough to break even the coldest of hearts. She has been to see other healers, more experienced doctors, and they have all told her the same thing. She won't live past this year.

Occasionally I'll find myself wondering about those who die young- what they think when they find out that the future they've planned for their entire life is gone, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Is she angry for the injustice fate has dealt her? Has she considered all alternatives? The questions roil around in my mind until I want to throw them all off the edge of the waterfall and wish them goodbye forever. I want to pretend it is not happening. I want to trade my life for hers, immortality for humanity because she is worth that and _so_ much more. I want to hold her…keep her…save her.

But I can't.

I _can't_, because death is not something you can deceive. Not even if your name is Vincent Valentine; not even if you are doomed to live forever while the woman you love dies slowly.

So I stay with her as she wanders the Planet aimlessly, growing weaker every day. Cities seem to materialize in front of us like magic, and she is never satisfied. I don't know what she is searching for. I don't know if she's looking for a cure, or if perhaps she feels that her legacy as a member of AVALANCHE isn't enough for a daughter of Wutai to leave behind.

Today she is crying at the edge of the lake, and I watch her, fascinated by the ripples of her tears in the water, distorting and manipulating her reflection like a disobedient child before smoothing it apologetically- _is that better? Now?_

The lake is a perfect mirror, stretching on for miles. Much of the city is submerged now, but I like it better this way; the ghosts of the Ancients are silent at last, buried beneath the water where no one can hear their cries.

I suppose I am cruel, being grateful for the silence- but I have never welcomed the voices of the dead, and today I only wish to hear Yuffie, watch her, comfort her in the only way that I can, simply by being near. There is nothing I can say to ease her pain, no excuses or condolences to give her hope. She is dying, and I know she hates her body for its weakness as much as I loathe mine for its immortality.

At length I make my way to her side, sitting next to her as she rocks back on her heels, then forward again, her head in her hands.

"I wish Aeris were here," she says, her voice muffled.

There is no suitable response for me to give to her admission. Aeris is dead, and her sweet voice has become a distant memory in the wake of all that has happened.

"I wish my mother were here," Yuffie continued. "Or Tifa."

"I have the PHS," I say dryly, taking no offense to her dismissal of _my_ presence because I know as well as she does that she is winding up to ask me something.

But, strangely out of character, she doesn't ask. She scoots back on her hands until she is next to me, and then sits, curling into my side like a cat looking for warmth. When she somehow manages to wriggle her shoulders under my arm so that my cloak is draped over her slender frame, I have to smile, if only at her ingenuity.

"What's it like to die, Vincent?" she asks softly, and her small hand clutches at mine as though she is scared to hear my answer.

I thread my fingers through hers, tarnished gold against porcelain. "I don't know."

"Dying can't possibly be anything like living," she says, without pause as if I hadn't spoken. "Life just happens. Death sneaks up on you from behind." She pauses. "Except for me- I guess it's made itself pretty apparent by now, right?"

The silence stretches on as she waits for an answer.

I don't know what to say to her, but I notice that her breathing has grown labored, as though each breath has become a battle against the slow demise of her body. I hold her tighter, wondering if the time has finally come or if this is merely another episode like all the rest.

"I'm so scared, Vincent," she murmurs, and stops to inhale, then exhale deliberately. "When my…when my mind dies…will I remember you?" She gulps, almost a sob, and says, "And when my _heart_ dies, will I still…will I still love-?"

The gravity of her admission, so ridiculously out of the blue, so Yuffie-like, hits me harder than I thought anything could, and my vision blurs.

"I don't know," I said, and suddenly it's not enough to tell her the truth- no, more than that, it's cruel. She deserves more than my flat responses, more than the simple truth as I know or don't know.

"Your heart won't die, Yuffie," I say, a sweet and blatant lie. "It may stop beating, but it won't die. Your body is just a shell- a temporary dwelling. Your heart, your mind, your soul- they live forever."

There's so much I want to say to her and I _can't_, I can't tell her these things because there are no words. To say that I love her would be a deception; what's inside of me is so much more than that.

"I don't want you to go," I finish dully, feeling as though the weight of the world is upon me once more.

She doesn't answer, and after a pause I look down at her. She is staring at me, her eyes wide and shadowy in her small, pale face, her breathing shallow. She is so beautiful that I feel a catch in my throat, a throbbing ache in my heart. For a moment we are suspended in time, and she is so perfect that I am inwardly still. The water could rise up and drown us both, the sky could catch on fire and I would still be staring into her eyes helplessly, a lost man finding salvation for the first time in half a century.

Then the moment is over, and she smiles faintly.

"Don't get mushy…on me just yet…Valentine," she whispers, her voice so soft I have to strain to hear. "I've got a few…years left."

She falls asleep like that, leaning against me, latched onto my arm as though she is afraid I will leave her there alone.

Somehow I know I can believe what she has said, because she has been close to death before and has always evaded it. I stand and gather her up in my arms, ready to take her inside, away from the cold.

She'll need her rest. Tomorrow will be her eighteenth birthday.


	4. sky turns black

**A/N:** This is a weird little story. I'm not going to pretend it makes any sense- a lot of it is just rambling. But I had fun writing it, got me over the block even though I had to draw on some influences from previous works.

**Running Away from the Sky: Sky Turns Black**

**THEME: "The Sky is Broken," Moby**

It's funny, how certain things can be associated with memories. Feelings, sounds, sensations- all wrapped up in a nice little package with a memory or two to remind you just how strange and ugly and fucked up life really is.

I'll never be able to stand in a storm without remembering that night. Never be able to watch the rain without knowing why I don't remember any rainstorms before it.

"I'm glad it's finally raining," Tifa said, walking into the dark room that was supposed to be mine with another one of those annoyingly upbeat smiles on her face.

I was still lingering somewhere in my subconscious, concentrating and recalling with flawed clarity the shudder of the earth beneath my feet, the feel of his fingers slipping through mine- the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears as I leaped from cliff to precipice to cliff again, searching for him long after the Planet had swallowed him up.

All I wanted was to find him, and it was all I'd thought about since coming here.

"It's been so dry lately," Tifa continued, moving to the window and pulling the heavy curtain aside. She stood for a moment in the occasional illumination of scattered lightning before turning back to face me.

"Supper's in fifteen minutes," she said. "Cloud should be here soon."

I didn't answer, eyes transfixed on the raindrops against the windowpane.

"He said to tell you that he was sorry, but Barrett called on the PHS and he'll be too late for dinner. The rain held him up." Tifa turned on the overhead, flooding the entire room with artificial light and effectively shattering my reverie.

"Who's Barrett?" I muttered, shielding my eyes with my hand.

She sighed, and it was a familiar sound; the sigh of a burdened caretaker who really didn't want to be either. But even I could hear the affection in her voice when she ruffled my hair and said, "Silly girl."

I wasn't trying to joke, but I guess it must have sounded strange to her, not remembering Barrett after we'd obviously had some sort of history together. I could vaguely recall what I imagined was his face- dark eyes and a gruff, easy smile- but beyond that…nothing.

"Fifteen minutes," Tifa repeated, and then she was gone, leaving me alone. Scowling, I leaned over and fumbled at the light switch, plunging the room into shadows once more.

The brief flashes of lightning were like misshapen barbeque forks, splitting the sky into careful sections as if it were necessary to designate _this_ part as not-quite-purple sky and _that_ part as midnight-black-shadowy-sky. The thunder was a low, constant rumbling that vibrated through the entire house, centering at the base of my skull, where I was leaning back against the wall. It was strangely comforting. For ninety-three days there had been droning in my head, voices, accusations; _you could have saved him if you'd just held on-_

The thunder's throaty growl provided a temporary reprieve from my own self-loathing.

Holding up both hands in front of me, I traced the outline of my fingers in the scant light of the window, lingering over the jagged scar tissue that dissected my palms and knuckles as neatly and efficiently as the forked lightning had done the sky. _THIS part is where I cut my hand pulling myself out of the Crater, and THAT part is where I reached out to grab him as we were falling and somehow got impaled by a chunk of rock instead..._

Ninety-three days sounds like a long time. Long enough for self-redemption, right? Long enough to forgive myself for something that wasn't entirely my fault in the first place. Long enough to regain some of the sanity I left behind in the ruins of the Northern Crater, all wet, slippery rock and smothered dreams, the occasional shaky memory of a faceless man pleading with me to listen, then later, listening and lying there as the quaking earth beneath me slowed and finally stopped, rivulets of Mako and rain snaking across my face and mingling with my tears, and I played his last words over and over in my head,_ Maybe it's better this way, Yuffie, it's better this way,_ when in fact it wasn't better, everything was much, much worse.

When you're living each moment like the next one might break you in half, ninety-three days is an eternity, and at the same time nothing more than a blink of an eye, a clumsy combination of inhale/exhale, the taste of blood and regret and _guilt_, crushing, maiming, tear-me-to-pieces guilt.

Slowly I sat up, running a hand through my hair, and edged off the bed to shut the door. The overhead was still too bright for my eyes, so I turned on the lamp on the nightstand and let its soft glow illuminate the room. As I stared at my shadowy reflection in the mirror, I thought that maybe it was better to stay in the dark, at least for a while. Until people forgot why I was here, or until they realized there was no way I could build a new life for myself because I was dead already. I'd left myself behind in the Crater, scattered out on the jagged caves in a thousand pieces.

My hair was way overdue for a trim, nearly past my shoulders now, the whole mess parted haphazardly down the middle and shoved behind my ears. I scraped it back off my face with one hand and scrubbed fiercely at my eyes with the other, maybe hoping to erase some of the fatigue that I was feeling. I knew I looked horrible, and I knew that it was my own fault. The smile Tifa had greeted me with on the Highwind had lacked the warmth it had always held before. The way she looked at me now was more curious than caring. I felt like tearing off my clothes and screaming, _You want to see my scars? These don't come CLOSE to what I look like on the inside._ She treated me like I was a broken thing in need of mending, but they don't make super-glue for hearts, and honestly…I wasn't about to admit how shattered I really was.

I grabbed my gloves and stumbled out into the hallway.

Tifa was standing in the kitchen, using oversized wooden utensils to throw salad all over the place. I stopped in the doorway, watching as she flung lettuce on the counter, at the dog- who was lying meekly on the floor- onto her shirt, everywhere but into the bowl where it belonged. Usually she tossed salad with a quiet professionalism derived from the subdued tolerance she maintained every day at her bar. Tonight she tossed salad like she wanted the wilting lettuce leaves to suffer.

As I was standing there, debating over whether to enter the vegetable torture chamber or stay out of harm's way, the doorbell rang.

"That must be Cloud," Tifa exclaimed, dropping the wooden sporks like they were on fire. She glanced at me and grinned. "Good, you're here. Can you go let him in, please?"

It sounded like a better job than chasing bits of tomato and cucumber all over the kitchen floor. I nodded and turned around, heading into the living room where the front door (and I assumed the doorbell) was located, pulling on my gloves as I did so.

My gloves were fingerless but nearly elbow-length, black and paper-thin, sometimes more intimidating than my scars because no one knew what horrors lay beneath the flimsy polyester. Cid had given them to me as I had hobbled off the Highwind, ready to start my "new life" in Nibelheim. He'd muttered something about not wanting me to feel self-conscious, which made me wonder if he understood more than he ever let on.

Unlatching the single deadbolt on the door, I turned the doorknob and pulled it open.

A blonde-haired man with vibrant blue eyes smiled at me, a lopsided grin that was warm and inviting, and I wondered if I had known him before, and liked him.

"Hey, Yuffie," he said. "Long time no see."

It's strange, the random facts that my mind had decided to retain. I knew he had a house next door that he stayed in sometimes, and I knew that it had been almost two years since Meteor had destroyed Midgar, but I couldn't remember if I had seen him at all since then.

"Yes," I found myself saying, for lack of any better response. "It's been a while."

He made his way into the kitchen and I wandered after him, listening idly for the rhythmic fall of rain on the roof. It would have been soothing if I had wanted it to be. Instead I sat at the table, silent, and thought of living in a dark world where there was no rain. No rain, no loss and no earthquakes to destroy the only person you'd ever truly cared about. The man you couldn't remember.

Cloud and Tifa made conversation, but obviously realized I didn't want to be a part of it. I didn't care much about what they were saying, so I just pushed my pasta around on my plate and listened, noticing that the salad Tifa had labored over was sitting forlornly in the center of the table, looking more tragic by the moment.

Their conversation was random but never forced. As they spoke I couldn't help but wonder if I had once been a part of this easy banter, this camaraderie that seemed so natural between them. Bits and pieces of the friendships I'd had sometimes filtered through the fog in my mind, and I would suddenly be left with an overwhelming sense of belonging for what seemed like the first time. But eventually, as hard as I tried to hold onto them, those memories would fade into the grayness, disappearing like so many had done before.

It wasn't until they were nearly finished eating that Cloud once more noticed my existence. "I wanted to talk to you, Yuffie, about maybe working for me whenever you feel like getting back into the swing of things," he said.

I was so involved in stabbing holes in my congealing spaghetti sauce that I didn't notice he had spoken to me until Tifa prompted, "Yuffie?"

"What?" It came out harsher than I'd intended, and I looked up to see them both staring at me. Reflexively I dropped my hands beneath the table, tangling my fingers in the napkin in my lap. "Sorry, I didn't hear what you said."

"I wanted to talk to you about coming to work for me," Cloud repeated. He met my eyes directly, which I usually liked for people to do, except that he had a wide-eyed innocence to his face that didn't ring true. I'd met too many people who had tried to "help" me in the past three months to be fooled again, and I stared at my plate, wondering how to respond.

"What kind of work?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

"I own a weapons and materia shop in Costa del Sol. I have a few people working for me already, but I really need a night manager who isn't going to drive me insane with impossible demands." All this with that same lopsided grin, which did little to put me at ease.

"I don't really like materia," I said after a moment's pause, not to be rude because I had no reason to dislike him yet, but to be honest, I _didn't_ like materia. I didn't know anything about it and didn't really care to learn. Weapons of destruction held no interest for me.

With the silence that followed my answer, though, you'd have thought I'd said I had a penchant for eating babies alive. Cloud and Tifa stared at me for a good minute and a half before Tifa finally cleared her throat.

"You don't…_have_ to like materia," she said diplomatically. "Your work may not even be directly involved with it anyway."

"You don't need to know much about it," Cloud added. "Costa del Sol is a vacation town. People who buy materia from us are really just in there to get a souvenir, either from the town or from a member of AVALANCHE. It won't be easy, you'll have to put up with a lot of people who want to hear about the good old days, but I figured that since you have no family here and might be wanting to get out on your own-"

"-And since you said you don't care much for Nibelheim anyway," Tifa broke in.

"-You might be just the woman I'm looking for."

My scars were aching, white-hot flashes of pain shooting up my arms and into my shoulders. "I don't know," I muttered, trying to keep my tone level.

"Tell you what." Cloud obviously wasn't taking no for an answer. "Why don't you come back with me to Costa del Sol. I'll give you the tour, show you everything that you'll be doing, and we can discuss wages, hours, whether or not you want to give me a solid kick in the ass, and take it from there. Would that be okay?"

"I guess."

"Great. I'm heading back tomorrow afternoon. Can you get everything together by then?"

"Sure." My head was swimming. "I'm not…feeling so great. I think I'm gonna go to bed."

Tifa sat up straight, instantly concerned. "Do you need anything? I still have your medicine-"

"No. No, I think I just need to get some rest." I stood hurriedly, and my hands were shaking so bad that there was no hope of hiding it from them, so I just pushed in my chair as quickly as I could. "It was nice meeting you, Cloud." Belatedly, I realized that I was supposed to have known this man for more than two years.

He met my eyes and said nothing about my slip of the tongue- to his credit. "You too, Yuffie. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Goodnight."

My room was blessedly cold, chilling my fingertips even as the pain in my scars settled to a slow, agonizing burn. I collapsed onto the bed, clawing at my gloves. The scars itched, they always itched, but it hurt too much to scratch them so I folded my hands against my stomach instead and stared out the window.

The cuts had been superficial, most of them able to heal with bandages and minimal curing spells. The scars wouldn't last long; even now they were fading to white, busy little spiderwebs tracing intricate designs across my skin.

In sick bay on the Highwind I'd lain there, staring at the ceiling for hours before Cid looked up from his log long enough to notice I was awake. Strangely, he'd been totally calm when he'd spoken.

"Hey, brat."

I had looked over at him, hardly moving my head because he was already leaning over me. "Hi."

He smiled, the strange expression looking absurdly out of character for him. "How ya feeling, kid?"

"I'm fine." My eyes trailed down my bandaged arms, lingering on my left hand, where they'd inserted an IV. Weren't they supposed to put those in the crook of your elbow? I'd always thought so.

"How long have I been asleep?" I asked. My brain was a little fuzzy; I figured it was whatever was in that drip they had plugged into my arm.

"Not long. You got 'bout eight hours." His smile grew crooked and I could tell he was fighting back tears.

I felt like I should say something, should _feel_ something to make it better. But I couldn't. I didn't. There was nothing inside me- literally, a big space of nothing, a void, a complete and total lack of interest in this new turn of events. Some small part of me was appalled that I wasn't more curious as to why I was here, in this room surrounded by machines and metal and pale green curtains. It had to be serious if Cid was near tears. I'd never seen him cry before.

"Where…I was with someone…where is he?" I asked, and I moved to fumble around for his hand but suddenly my fingers were on fire, my forearm was trembling, _oh my gawd please tell me this didn't ruin my hands, please Leviathan don't let it be that, anything but my hands. _It was the first real emotion I had felt since…ever, and I was horrified that something so mundane as still being able to fight could make me feel so strongly.

"There was no one with you. You…almost…died," Cid said, choked up and looking like an old man even though he'd never looked old to me before, and he leaned over to hug me, weird because we never hugged, awkward because I was bandaged and lying in bed with a freaking IV in my arm.

It was like we'd switched places and I was the comforter and he was in need of it, and I was heedless of the pain as I reached up with my right hand to touch his shoulder, _tell me what's wrong so I can make it better, _like you see on those cheap broadcast shows and read about in sappy books. It wasn't genuine of me. It wasn't genuine because somehow I was detached, floating above us, looking down on me and Cid hugging and comforting each other in our mutual moment of grief, everything that friends should do except that I felt nothing. _Nothing_- and what did that say about me? I couldn't feel _nothing_, that should have been impossible.

Suddenly there was a knock at my door, which brought me back to the present too abruptly for comfort.

Tifa never knocked.

"Come in," I said, pulling a quilt over myself so she would think I was sleeping.

She pushed open the door and stuck her head in. "Hey. I'm gonna go to bed now."

"Me too," I said pointedly.

Instead of leaving, though, she opened the door further and came in to sit at the edge of my bed. "If you need anything for the trip to Costa del Sol, let me know and I'll try to help," she told me seriously. "I know that Shera sent a lot with you, but I know how it is to wear clothes secondhand." In the dim light I could see her wrinkle her nose as she fingered the hem of my quilt idly. "I never liked her taste in clothes anyway."

"Mm." I purposely looked past her, at the window, where lightning was still flashing in the distance, although the thunder had abated.

She paused, and I could feel her staring at me. "I'm sorry I didn't knock before," she said at last, motioning towards the door. "It's been so long since I've had anybody live with me. I'm kinda new at this roommate stuff, but I should have known that you might like your privacy."

"Yeah." No kidding.

"I still have your pain pills, if you're hurting," she said. "Are you feeling all right?"

"I'm fine. Just tired." I was scared of pills. I had the feeling that somebody had ingrained that into me from the beginning, but I didn't know whom. Cid had said maybe it had something to do with my ninja training, achieving balance through body and inner serenity and all that.

Tifa's hand on my cheek came as a surprise, and I jerked back before I could stop myself, hitting my head on the wall behind me.

"Gawd-" I snapped upright, cursing between my teeth, and brought a hand up to the throbbing lump on the back of my skull. "Why the hell did you do that?"

"I'm sorry," she said, and placed a hand on my shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not all right!" I snarled, brushing her hand off impatiently. "Give me some fucking warning if you're gonna do that, would you?"

"I'm sorry," she repeated, standing quickly. Her voice was flat. "I didn't mean to surprise you like that, but you don't need to get angry."

"Well, what do you expect me to do? Nobody touches me, Tifa. You can't just stroke my hair and expect everything to get _better_. It's not gonna be okay just because you and Cloud are trying to fix me, don't you get that?" Scowling, I flung the quilt off my knees and flung open the door. "I'm taking a walk."

"It's still raining-"

"I don't _care._" Snatching my coat out of the closet, I stomped to the door and went outside, slamming it shut behind me.

My sneakers made wet slaps against the ground, puddles rippling beneath my feet. My head ached, and the familiar guilt had settled over me like a shroud.

Hitting my head wasn't that big of a deal, and besides, it wasn't Tifa's fault. It was mine. The knowledge of that fact made me angrier. I didn't have a problem with touch, but I hadn't been expecting it. Damn her for embarrassing me like that.

Outside of Nibelheim I slid down beside a boulder and pulled my hood up, shivering at the cascade of water down my back.

I'd only been in this town for a short time, and I was already dangerously close to breaking. I rested my face in the crook of my elbow, wondering how the hell I'd gotten myself into this situation. So many things had happened. How could I ever hope to build any kind of normal life again?

"You just need to start over," Cid had told me seriously when Shera had said I was well enough to leave. He was hovering close to me, as if he were afraid I might trip and break into tiny pieces against the grass. He'd been that way ever since he'd picked me up in the ruins of the Northern Crater- completely out of character, a far cry from the apathetic old codger that I so clearly remembered.

All I could do when he'd said that was stay silent, my mind an uncomfortable blend of sorrow and apathy.

The earthquake had been massive, the Lifestream bubbling up between split rocks and pouring over the face of the Crater. The giant cave had collapsed in on itself. The Planet swallowed it and smoothed out craggy plains over its remains as though the great crater had never been. The man I'd been with had fallen. I tried to save him, but the trembling ground had split beneath us, and I'd lost my hold on his hand.

I remember running after him, chasing his screams beneath the earth, until the Planet tried to take me, too, and I barely managed to anchor myself on an outcropping of rock that was rising up out of the depths of the caves.

I had lain there for what seemed like an eternity. In reality, it was seven days. The sickness in my head- sun poisoning, isn't that so freaking _clichéd?_- worked its magic in those seven days. I could barely remember my own name by the end of them. I thought that someone moved me, I even half-remembered it, but later they told me that I walked all the way to the shore and collapsed there, that I'd sent an emergency distress signal on my PHS- all the things that I was supposed to do in a situation like that.

Cid was the first person I saw, and when the sunlight gleamed off his ashy-blonde hair, I thought I'd finally died and it was all over.

No such luck.

You see, even though I wasn't fortunate enough to remember the story of what had happened, my friends had told me. Godo and I had severed our blood ties- or more accurately, he had cut me off from the Kisaragi bloodline, probably because he had wanted me to start training for lordship- ladyship?- over the Pagoda and I hadn't wanted to. Godo had turned the title over to a cousin because he didn't want to wait any longer.

It was strange. I felt like a leader. I knew that I had been ready before this. But nevertheless, Godo had made his choice, and apparently I hadn't been mature enough to handle his decision, couldn't accept the fact that I was being foisted out of the job I'd been preparing myself for since _birth_ just because I wanted a little more time. And so I'd run away, although at eighteen 'running away' is pretty much just telling everyone that you're leaving for a while and don't worry because you'll be _fine_, thank you very much.

And I'd gone to the Crater, possibly to search for Aeris, who was a friend I'd long forgotten by now. I thought, could remember, could _almost _see the face of the man who had accompanied me.

I hadn't gone alone. I knew I hadn't.

But then there was the earthquake.

I shook my head.

There was no man.

There had been no one else. Time and time again, Cid had told me I had been alone when he found me.

Afterwards, Tifa was determined to help. She had offered to take me in, let me stay with her until I was ready to re-enter society and a life of my own. Cid had packed me into the Highwind and delivered me to Nibelheim, and Tifa had thrown her arms around me and hugged me as though she thought I might disintegrate at any moment. _I'll help you find your way,_ she promised me, shakily, but I didn't respond because there was nothing to say.

I hadn't lost my way. I'd lost my _soul_.

There wasn't much anyone could do about that, I thought as I stared at the water coursing through the grass.

Most people, I think, are truly lonely. They hurt, they cry, they make heartfelt wishes on stars that we all know will never come true. With a glimpse into my life, you may find yourself wondering how I ended up being such a self-pitying brat. In reality, most people are miserable, most people have thoughts of self-condemnation. We've been taught to hide our true feelings behind a façade of happiness.

I'm just a little cynical, so maybe my thoughts seem darker or more pessimistic than everyone else's. But I'm really no different.

There was a light breeze accompanying the rain, which chilled me to the bone in my soaking clothes, but I wasn't ready to go back to Tifa's house. Dragging my feet up underneath me, I stood and started walking.

It wasn't until a bolt of lightning split the sky and the ground rumbled beneath me that I realized how long I'd been gone, and how far I'd traveled. I could see the river stretching out in a thin, black line before me. Crossing it- if that were possible on foot- would take me into the Cosmo plains, and I wasn't about to venture there all by myself. I turned back towards Nibelheim, noting for the first time that my feet were aching.

Stupid. In my ignorance, I'd wandered miles away from anything resembling a city. And now my feet were hurting, which didn't serve to improve my mood any.

As I edged along the side of the mountain, trying to keep pressed up as close to its stone facing as I could, I rounded a corner and stepped into a circle of darkness. A cave, conveniently enough.

Shivering, I wrapped my arms around myself and stumbled inside, trying not to imagine what dangers could lurk in the darkness. I sat down on the floor and removed my jacket, then peeled my soaked shirt off and spread it on the ground to dry. I wanted to do the same with my threadbare khaki shorts, but wasn't crazy about the idea of camping out half-naked in a dark cave.

I pulled my jacket back on and leaned back, my shoulders against the wall, the stone unforgiving to the back of my skull. Eventually I fell asleep there, lulled into slumber by the sound of the storm raging beyond the darkness of my pathetic hideaway.

I woke to the feel of a hand on my shoulder.

This hand was heavy and thick- and _cold- _and that was something that nothing that belonged to Tifa _ever_ was, so I opened my eyes in a hurry, ready to beat the stuffing out of whoever dared touch me while I was sleeping.

But I stopped.

I stopped because there was a man in front of me. And not just any man, I mean, if there had been some smelly hobo with a really gross leer on his face and a look like he was about to feel me up or something, I _so_ would have knocked his block off. But this man was…familiar.

Kneeling before me, eyes downcast as he tucked a wolf pelt around my shoulders. His black hair hung in his eyes, nearly obscuring them from my vision, and the hand at my neck was tarnished gold from elbow to fingertip, razor-sharp digits skimming my jawbone.

He was so close I almost held my breath. Morning breath can be really hideous, you know? But then I sneezed right in his face, and my cover was blown as he looked sharply at me with _red eyes_- no joke, frigging red eyes like blood or tomatoes or Cid's face when he was really super angry- and I drew back, whacking my already-sore head against the stone behind me.

"OW!" I yelped as I hunched up from the pain. I must have scared him a little, because he sat back on his heels and just stared at me. His face was so deadpan that at first I thought maybe he was joking with me, but as the seconds ticked by and he didn't say anything, I began to feel a little uneasy.

We were silent for a few moments longer before he stood and pulled a very lethal-looking handgun from its holster at his hip. "Are you lost?" he asked in a monotone.

"Sort of," I answered truthfully. "Am I pretty close to Nibelheim?"

He nodded and reached into his pocket, drawing out a handful of bullets. For some reason I wasn't afraid of what he was doing. He was a hunter, after all, and carrying a gun was to be expected for someone who worked in that field. What's more, I could see what he was doing and…and _remember_ him doing it some other time, at some other place. Maybe it was in the dark; I couldn't recall much of the surroundings. All I knew was that I'd seen him before.

What was his _name?_ I racked my brain for the answer, but drew a complete blank. Slowly I stood, gripping the wolf pelt to me as though he had x-ray vision and could see through my jacket or something. My shirt still lay harmlessly on the floor, but I wasn't about to put it on while he was watching.

"I…remember you," I said, my voice gaining strength with each word. "I _remember_ you!"

He cast me a sidelong glance as he loaded his revolver, his movements clean and precise. I stopped for a second or two to watch, fascinated. I knew every motion as though it were my own; he was more familiar to me than anything I'd seen since the earthquake, including myself. I felt like I _knew_ him.

But I didn't know where I'd met him, or how. Or when. And he didn't seem to know me at all.

"Don't you remember me?" I asked, so excited that I completely forgot to consider the possibility that maybe we hadn't even been friends. "I'm Yuffie," I added, not sure what the extent of our relationship had been. Maybe I had known him really well and he hadn't paid much attention to me. (It was probably the story of my life. I didn't recall, but I couldn't imagine myself as a heartbreaker.)

He finally slid the revolver back into its holster and looked up at me strangely. "Yuffie," he said.

I nodded.

"Yuffie Kisaragi."

Again, I nodded.

"The last I heard-" He paused and swung a red cloak up over his shoulders, buckling at the throat- "You were clearing out the Northern Crater."

That he actually said it came as something of a shock to me. In the months since my amnesia had struck, new people I'd met had done their best not to remind me of the tragedy that had befallen me. It was odd, like they thought it was something they could choose not to talk about, and therefore I would completely forget about it in time.

I felt like an idiot for nodding again, but there was nothing else to say.

The man regarded me impassively. For some reason I felt like his red eyes could see right _through_ me, and it made me a little uncomfortable- but also hopeful, because maybe he could help me rediscover all the things I'd lost.

Nodding once, he picked up the wolf pelts and slung them over his shoulder. "I couldn't forget you if I tried," he said.

Then he walked past me and out of the cave.

For a handful of heartbeats I just stood there stupidly, unable to comprehend what had just taken place.

What a _jerk!_

"Hey, wait!" I called out, spinning on my heels. "You can't just- just walk away like that, mister! I think you owe me an explanation." His legs were so long that I had to run to catch up with him, and even then I had to trot alongside him to keep pace with his huge stride. "What are you doing here?"

The look he tossed in my direction was more than a little annoyed. "You haven't changed much, I see."

"I hope not," I said. "What are you doing here? Outside of Nibelheim, I mean. Do you live around here? I haven't seen you in town."

"I don't live in town."

Gawd, talk about monosyllabic answers. "Just passing through, then?" I pressed, determined to know more.

He veered sharply to the left, his shoulder bumping mine. I opened my mouth to protest before I stumbled into a fault in the stone beside us, and he brushed past me, deeper into the mountain. Incredulous, I stared after him, but he didn't pause to answer or even acknowledge my question. He had to walk almost sideways just to fit through the tiny passageway; I could have reached out with my hands and touched both sides.

I hadn't even seen this opening from outside, and I'd been standing less than a foot away from the mountain.

"Wait!" I commanded in my best authoritative voice, and stomped after this man who was obviously not a person I'd counted as a friend before I'd lost my memory. Or if he was, my friends were really weird. I dashed around in front of him, well, actually squeezed past him and stopped, holding my arms out so that the heels of my hands touched the stone on either side and blocked his way completely. "Stop," I ordered. "I need to talk to you."

The glare he gave me would have broken a lesser woman. But not me.

"Don't give me that look," I said. "I know you. And you're not about to walk away until you tell me why."

This time his eyebrows lifted, and his expression changed to something quizzical. "Why…?" he repeated, as if he couldn't understand.

"Yes, why. Why you're here, why I remember you when I can't remember _anything_, and why you covered me up with one of your furs so I wouldn't freeze when you obviously hate my guts!"

His gaze dropped, then flicked back up to my face, and I realized abruptly that my coat was open, and all I had on underneath was…not much, besides the scars. I brought the wolf pelt dangling from my right hand back to its original position in front of me, and tried to subtly stave off the blush that was creeping up my neck. "Tell me why."

"Why I'm here," he said.

"To start with, yeah. Why you're here as opposed to Kalm or Costa del Sol or…wherever."

He nodded his head towards the wolf fur I was sporting across my torso. "Bounty hunting."

"Midgar Zoloms are worth more," I said before I could stop myself. In my haste to reconstruct my memory- which had been a really fruitless venture in the end- I'd read more than my share of the Highwind's internet database files. I was a virtual fount of useless facts, among them the frequency and monetary worth of every animal and fiend Planet-wide.

"Midgar Zoloms are in the grassland marshes," he answered. "Nibel wolves are here."

The simple statement spoke volumes. So he lived here already. Had I met him here?

"Okay," I said. "Why do I remember you? Where did we meet?"

He looked at me for a long time before he replied. "We met in Nibelheim, in the basement of the Shin-Ra mansion. You persuaded me to join AVALANCHE."

"I did?" Tifa had told me the names of all members of AVALANCHE. She and Cloud….um…Barrett, a girl named Aeris who had been killed, a mechanical cat who rode around on a moogle (she had told me again and again that it had been controlled by an actual person, but I still thought she must have been joking), Cid, and…

"Either Red XIII or Vincent Valentine," I said out loud. "You're…" Duh. Red. His eyes, his cape, the bandanna tied around his forehead. The guy was Red.

"Vincent," he said.

Er. Never mind.

"You've lost your memory?" Vincent said, the last syllable rising in intonation and forcing what would have been a statement into a question. But he also sounded as if he thought maybe I was kidding him, pulling his leg or something. Was that the kind of person I'd been before?

"Something like that," I said glumly. "It sucks."

I expected him to apologize because everyone did. _Oh, you've got amnesia? Gee, sorry about that. _It was weird. I didn't mind people's sympathy, but when they apologized for the earthquake, I always wondered if they'd done something inadvertently to cause it.

But Vincent said nothing, simply stood there and waited.

"Why do you hate me, Vincent?" I asked finally. No use beating around the bush. "I thought we were all friends- AVALANCHE, I mean."

Tifa's words were coming back to me now. She hadn't said much about any of the members of AVALANCHE, mostly because I hadn't wanted to hear it, but she had talked least of all about Vincent. I'd thought maybe they weren't close. That had been an understatement. Anyone who tried to be friends with Mr. Valentine was in serious danger of getting frostbite.

Unbidden, a shiver ran through me. I was still nearly naked underneath my jacket, and I was wearing shorts, and the frigid air swishing through the tiny corridor beneath the mountain wasn't exactly warming me up.

Vincent sighed. "I don't hate you, Yuffie," he said. "I can take you back to Nibelheim, if you want. It's just west of here. You can reach it well before nightfall."

"No thank you," I answered in a hurry. Going back to Nibelheim and being toted off to Costa del Sol with Cloud was not something I wanted to do today. Not that shacking up with I'm-So-Goth-I'm-Dead Vincent Valentine sounded much better, really, but it did seem the more appealing of the two options.

Slowly, he nodded, looking as though he'd rather be skinned alive than tolerate my presence for a minute longer. I frowned at him. I was tired of feeling out of place all the time among my so-called "friends."

As a matter of fact, the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I just wanted to be left alone. Why was everyone acting so put out about my presence when I hadn't even wanted to be here in the first place?

"You know what," I said, "you're right. I'm leaving. Nice meeting you." I turned on my heel and walked out of the fault. My sense of direction wasn't too keen, but I deliberately went left, which seemed the best option for east.

"Nibelheim's the other way," he called from behind me.

"I'm not going to Nibelheim, wise-ass," I shot back, feeling pleased with myself for the first time in, I don't know, forever.

I heard his boots on the grass as he ran to catch up with me. "Where are you going, then?" he asked with the patience that you would use when speaking to a child.

Furious, I stopped and glared at him, hands on my hips. "I really don't think that's any of your business."

He blinked, and after a moment or two I started to feel badly about being mean to him. Maybe he just didn't know how to talk to people.

"I'm sorry," I muttered, looking down at my feet again. "I don't know you. It's pretty ridiculous to be unloading all my troubles on you like this. It's just…losing my…friend, losing my memory…it gets heavy, you know?"

He started walking in the same direction I'd been heading only moments before, and I followed, not bothering to wonder why he was heading the opposite direction of his home.

"You lost a friend?" he asked when I drew abreast.

"I…think so. I mean, everyone tells me I was at the Northern Crater alone, but I _remember_, you know. I remember searching for someone. Except that he was- he was gone, or dead, or maybe he left me for dead. I don't know."

"You've never lost anyone before?"

"I don't remember," I admitted. "I don't remember losing anyone or…or _not _losing anyone. It's all just a jumbled mess."

"You lost your mother."

"I don't even remember her," I said, wondering just how well Vincent had known me before.

"Aeris."

"I don't remember her, either."

"Who _do_ you remember, then?"

I took a deep breath. "Cid. Sometimes…sometimes I remember my dad. I don't know. But I remember you. I definitely remember you." Sneaking a glance his way, I saw that his brow was knitted in thought as he walked, his long strides slowed to match my own smaller steps. "Why is that? Were we friends?"

"Yes."

Why had he acted so cold then? "Were we…" I stopped, feeling dumb for even thinking it.

"No," he said. I hadn't even had to finish the sentence.

I felt deflated, strangely, for no apparent reason. Maybe because I had held hope that I wasn't alone after all, that the nameless man I had conjured up in my memory hadn't been the beginning and the end of me like my heart seemed to think.

"Where are you going?" he asked; kind enough, perhaps, to change the subject before I could say anything else.

Sighing, I kicked at a pile of torn grass. "Does it matter?"

"It does if you're running away."

"So what am I running away from, is that the question?"

He didn't answer, and I ran a hand over my tangled hair, deliberately stalling for time. "Fine. Okay. I'm running away from life, how does that sound?"

"Ridiculous," he said flatly.

"Hey, give me a break, deadboy. At least I don't hole up in a coffin when I'm mad," I snapped.

He stopped walking.

After another step or two, so did I.

"How did I know that?" I exclaimed, whirling to face him. "How did I remember-"

"I don't know."

"Gawd!" I yelled, kicking at the grass and nearly falling on my butt. "Why do I remember you and not my mother? Why do I know Cid but not my hometown? I don't understand it!"

"Maybe it's not amnesia that's keeping you from remembering," Vincent said, folding his arms across his chest. One glinted in the sunlight, flashing in my eyes. "Maybe this is a deliberate decision on your part. Maybe you don't _want_ to remember."

"Don't want…that's dumb, Vinnie. You're telling me I don't want to remember Tifa, but I want to remember you? After the way you've treated me?" Of all the nerve! To suggest I was doing this to _myself, _well, that was completely bogus. And offensive. And just the idea of it pissed me off. "You don't have any right to judge me like that. Who are you, anyway? I just _met_ you."

The corners of his mouth turned down. "I can see you haven't changed a bit," he said, and turned and began to walk back towards the fault.

"Don't walk away from me!" I ordered, stomping after him and grabbing his cloak. "Who the hell do you think you are? You don't know what's happened to me. We probably haven't even seen each other since we were in AVALANCHE together. And you think…you think you have the right to accuse me of _faking_ this?"

He opened his mouth like he was going to speak, but I cut him off. "Now when I first met you, Vincent Valentine, I was pretty darn excited. I don't remember _anything_ these days, but I remembered _you_, Leviathan knows why because you're such an intolerable _jackass._ I thought maybe that was the first step to figuring out what was really wrong with me. Who knows, right? Maybe this is all in my _mind_, maybe I'm not really dead or dying and I just need a kick in the pants to snap out of it!"

"Dying?" he repeated incredulously. I had to admit it sounded a bit outlandish, but I continued anyway.

"But no, you have to be the same old dour _asshole_ that Tifa told me about. Well, screw you. Screw everyone! I'm tired of being told what to do and where to go. I'm leaving, and I'm going to find a way to cure this amnesia, and I'm going to find a way to get that man I _know I was with_…" I hesitated, images of the smashed Crater flashing in my mind like photographs. "A way to get-" tears now, just great, just _fucking great_- "get him back." Despite my best efforts, they spilled over; despairing tears, tears of shame, tears because even though I couldn't remember much, I remembered that I had loved that man and I remembered that he was gone.

Tears because I knew there was no way to ever get him back or I would have found it by now.

Vincent was silent. After a moment he put a hand on my shoulder. "You're not going to die," he said quietly.

I shook my head and swiped my knuckles across my face, sniffling. "You don't understand. It's not dying outside that bothers me. But inside…I just don't want to be _alone_. With Tifa, I'm…I'm alone. I could be in a crowded room and I'd still be alone." Unbidden, a laugh worked its way up from my throat, and it struck me how crazy I was acting, crying and laughing to a complete stranger. I turned and started walking again, back towards Nibelheim, and he kept pace, letting his hand slide gracefully from my shoulder. "I have to…I just have to _go_. I need to leave before I die from being here."

"I know the feeling," he muttered, strangely out of character. As if I _knew_ his character, honestly, but somehow I felt like I did.

"I know I know you," I said helplessly. "I hate not remembering."

He cleared his throat. "There's things you probably wouldn't…like to know about me. Maybe…it's better…this way."

The words hit me like a solid physical blow. _It's better this way._

_It's…better…this way._

_Maybe it's better this way, Yuffie, it's better this way._

I stopped and gazed at him, slowly trying to match the lines of his face to the shadowed man I'd seen in my dreams.

It just wasn't possible. This man…this red-eyed man who was so nomadic and detached couldn't possibly be the man I'd lost at the Crater.

But the way he'd said it was so achingly similar. It had to be- it just had to-

"You lied to me," I said, and my voice was so clear that it surprised me.

He met my gaze warily, remaining stoic even as the wind began to rustle the grass beneath our feet. "About what?"

"You…you said we weren't…" I trailed off, feeling stupid for considering it.

The silence that followed my words was long, the wind increasing in its fury. His cloak writhed and twisted about his shoulders like a living thing, and his hair whipped around his face, but he said nothing. Knowing, perhaps, that anything he said might incriminate him.

"That man," I said, staring at his chest because I was too shy now to meet his eyes, "at the Crater. I know he was there. I remember him _being_ there, even if I don't remember exactly who he was. Everyone's telling me that my father and I had a falling-out because I wasn't ready to take over leadership of Wutai. But I'm- I know myself, and I know I could handle something like that. I feel ready _right now_. It was all I'd been training for. The only way he could have forced me out of ladyship would be if there was something else…or someone…" I looked up at him, forcing myself to meet his gaze, "that I cared for more than Wutai."

I could see him drawing in a breath. It was deep, deep enough that I knew he was fighting for calm just like I was.

"Lords and ladies can't marry outside of Wutainese blood," I said. "I don't, um, remember, I learned that from my reading on the Highwind. I think that's what happened."

"Is that so," he said dully, every word like a knife to my heart.

Bits and pieces came to me now- his hands, one cool and metallic, one warm and gentle, sliding across my skin in a sweet caress.

He made a noise in his throat. I glanced over at him and was shocked to find him staring right at me, my own pain written exquisitely in his blood-red eyes. There was an intense pull from him, like a magnet or something, but I tried my best to ignore it.

"You can't go anywhere dressed like that," he said. I was still pitifully clutching the wolf pelt around me and shivering. "Let me walk you back to Nibelheim."

"I'm going back anyway. Cloud wants me to go with him to Costa del Sol," I said stubbornly.

"So go."

"I don't want to."

"Then don't."

"It's not that simple!" I exclaimed, frustrated. "I hate Nibelheim. I want to go to Costa del Sol. But I don't remember Cloud at _all_. I don't want to be in a strange city with a bunch of strangers."

"Stay here, then."

"You're not listening to me at all, are you?" I wailed, stopping for the sole purpose of stomping my feet. Which really did make me feel a little better.

"Yuffie," he said, infinitely patient. "You are eighteen years old. Your whole life is ahead of you. This…man you're speaking of certainly wouldn't want you to stop living because of him. On the contrary, I think he'd want you to pay him tribute by experiencing life at its best."

I knew it was him, and he knew I knew. He had to. "I don't want to pay him tribute. I want him _here with me _so he can pay tribute all by himself if he wants it so bad. Arrogant bastard."

Vincent smiled at my words, and it softened his entire face, easing the shadows beneath his eyes, adding a striking, haunting beauty to his features that hadn't been there before. It was so familiar that I stared at him, dumbfounded, wondering why I couldn't remember more about him.

"Why'd you leave, Vincent?" I whispered, stepping closer to him so he could hear me over the wind. "Why'd you leave me there at the Crater? Why haven't you…contacted me at all since I've been here? Have you been watching? Is that all you've done?"

His eyes were filled with tears as he looked at me, his expression unchanging. "You blamed me for the loss of your birthright," he said. "You don't remember?"

"I don't remember anything."

"We'd quarreled before, but not to that extent…and then the earthquake…"

"You just left me there?_"_ I exclaimed, disbelieving.

"I was buried underground, had to find my way out of the Crater. It took…days. I carried you to the shore," Vincent muttered, staring at his hands and flexing his fingers. "I made a distress call on the PHS. I knew you didn't want anything more to do with me- you said as much yourself-"

"I didn't- oh gods, there's no way, Vincent," I said, and I was crying again even though it was really pathetic of me. "I lost my mind and I still know you, you're all I think about, every day. If I'd just known that it was you- I don't remember everything but I know there's something there, something that won't let me go even though everything else is completely lost." I took a breath before continuing, "Is that why you're here? To keep an eye on me?"

Vincent's nod was barely discernible, but then he raked a hand through his hair and said, "I know you don't remember what we had, Yuffie. I had hoped- maybe- in time you'd regain your memory. Then I'd know for sure if you hated me as much as you said."

He paused, and said, "Don't go, Yuffie. I've never asked anything of you before, but I'm asking you now to stay. Nibelheim is my home. I could never survive in Costa del Sol." He shuddered. "All those tourists."

It was all so simplistic and surreal. I smiled, wrapping my arms around myself and wishing that my emotions weren't such a jumbled mess.

"You've watched me the whole time?" I asked.

My hair was in my eyes, and he brushed it aside with his fingertips before he answered. "Yes."

I laughed, choking a little on my tears. "My own personal guardian angel."

"I'm not an angel," he said, and there was a smile on his lips, a dangerous smile that I felt I knew well.

There was nothing else for me to say. I didn't remember anything, but I'd found what I was looking for. It wasn't enough, not by a long shot.

It was only a beginning.

Somehow, that seemed like enough for now.

"Walk me back?" I asked, a little shy because I didn't know what we'd shared.

He met my gaze, his eyes smoldering with intensity. "Of course, Yuffie."

So simple.

I didn't know him. I barely remembered him. But I'd found him, and the rest could come later.


	5. sky blue

**A/N: **Snippet.

**Running Away From The Sky: Sky Blue**

**Theme: "Sky Blue," Peter Gabriel**

The scholars have written stories of immortality, always hinting at its impossible allure with childish, unknowing tales of riches and greatness. He has read them, of course, having pored over the books in Hojo's libraries like a dying man searching for a cure, when in fact- oh Planet, the _irony_- it is exactly the opposite.

He is a man who will outlive the books he has read, and he knows all the stories with their gallant heroes and tortured immortality, and he would laugh at them if it were only worth the effort.

The truth is that the agony of living forever fades over time. After Lucrecia, he thought he would die from the pain; after Meteor and Geostigma, he thought he would die from the loneliness, and after his friends began to fade away, one by one, he thought he would die from the guilt.

There is nothing left to die for now, and he has come to accept his fate, strange and boring as it is. He exists in a twisted sort of half-life, chewing slowly on the fruit of immortality, acknowledging its rough and gritty texture without tasting a thing.

"There are no heroes."

He looks up when she speaks, and the resonance of her tone is delicate and tragic; a bittersweet reality that sometimes seems out of place. The sound of her voice is like glass shattering on stone, the last flight of a dying butterfly.

Her mutterings these days rarely unite memory and logic; often it's either one or the other, a stilted, inaccurate remembrance of years past or a sudden philosophical epiphany. He has the feeling that this hero revelation probably falls into the latter category, and says nothing.

"I know you don't believe me, but it's true," she says flatly, playing with the end of her long braid. It is the one vanity she has allowed herself. Even as ribbons of silver continue to spiral through the dark strands, she refuses to cut it, and wears it in a thick plait that coils neatly on the quilt beside her.

It is something he likes about her. His own concession to modern style included folding his cloak into a forgotten corner of the wardrobe, trimming his hair into some semblance of order to better fit in with the blue-collar citizens of Edge. The decades have ticked by slowly, and with every passing year he has become less of a monster, and more of a man.

She, however, has stayed very much the same.

"I believe you," he says at length. "I just don't understand."

When he looks at her, he no longer notices the cobalt veins spiderwebbing her paper-thin skin, the deep grooves around her cobalt eyes and beside her mouth. She is still the same lithe warrior he met in the basement of the mansion, still the same Yuffie.

"I thought there were heroes, a long time ago," she tells him. "You and Cloud and me- I mean, we were heroes, right?"

"I'm no hero," he replies, a smile curving his lips.

"Neither am I. We're both just...human." She seems to consider this for a moment, and then shakes her head. "Beneath it all, we're just human."

This is why he stays with her now, even as the world around them turns to dust. He was never a monster to her.


End file.
